


For a Second There

by Deannie



Series: Young Mister Ryan and His Undercover Cousin [2]
Category: Castle, The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Cousins, Drowning, Episode: s03e13 Knockdown, Gen, Magnificent Seven AU: ATF, a sort of pedestrian crossover event
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-08
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-12 16:12:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5672161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ignoring the shaking of every limb, Kevin hauled himself to his feet. He could do this. He wasn’t even really hurt, right? Just some residual chills. He was fine.</p><p>He could do this.</p><p>(Takes place after Castle season three episode "Knockdown".)</p>
            </blockquote>





	For a Second There

 

> _”You tell me what I want to know, and I will put a bullet in your brain. You jerk me around, and you will be begging me to, before this night is up.”_

Kevin Ryan's nightmare launched him out of his bed with a yell, where he fell hard on the floorboards and stayed there for a moment on his hands and knees, coughing out freezing water that had long since been expelled from his lungs.

”Jesus,” he whispered. He sat back on his heels finally and thanked God he hadn’t told Jenny what happened tonight—that they hadn’t had plans to get together later. Javi hadn’t had any choice with Lanie, of course. Once the EMTs released them both and they headed back to the precinct, she’d descended on Kevin’s partner and spirited him away, to the good-natured ribbing of all of them.

Because that was what they did, right? Laughing in the face of capture and strangulation and traumatic near drowning and…

Ignoring the shaking of every limb, Kevin hauled himself to his feet. He could do this. He wasn’t even really hurt, right? Just some residual chills. He was fine.

He grabbed a long sleeved henley and pulled it on over his pajama t-shirt; grabbed a sweater off his chair and put that on, too. He could do this.

He didn’t bother turning on any lights in the living room, padding to the kitchen to fix some coffee. And yes, he knew it wasn’t even five o’clock in the morning, but he wasn’t getting back to sleep, so there wasn’t any point in pretending he was. And God, he was cold.

 

> _The skin on his face tightened immediately and the ice water made his skull feel like it was on fire. He made a crucial mistake and screamed, and a tiny gush of ice water hit his lungs like knives—_

The mug that had been in his hand bounced loudly on the floor but didn’t break. It did pull him out of the memory, though. He crouched down to pick it up. _At least I still have both my kneecaps._

 

> _”Shoot out one of his kneecaps.”_
> 
> _Javi screamed his denial and Kevin clearly heard the guilt in it. He glanced over at his partner in panic, knowing by the look in Esposito’s eyes that he’d never forgive himself for what was about to happen—_

“God _damn_ it.”

Kevin stood up, shuddering with a cold at odds with the heat blasting through his apartment in the radiator's vain attempt to warm what wouldn't warm.

Okay, maybe he _couldn’t_ do this.

He picked up his phone without thinking about it and saw that Castle had left him a text: `Hot bath and scotch. Hope you’re okay.`

A hot bath. Kevin actually laughed at that. He wasn’t going anywhere near a tub—even the shower in his bathroom gave him the willies.

 

> _The ice cubes made a particular sound as they hit such a large body of water. Not like ice going into a glass of scotch, or a punch bowl. Like the sound the ice made when you watch CSU pull a body out of the East River in January._

Leaving the coffee to brew, he walked to the couch and curled into a corner of it, pulling down the “manly” afghan Jenny had given him last year. The phone was still in his hand and he decided that meant he should call someone.

Not Javi. Javi had his own problems—he’d be hoarse for days from the noose and the screaming and there was still that look in his eyes… No, he told himself, breathing as deeply as he could without setting off the cough. Not Javi.

Castle had Beckett to deal with, and Kevin wasn’t really sure Castle himself was okay. He’d been with it enough when Beckett came to untie them after the fireworks to notice that Castle had tried to beat _someone_ bloody, given the condition of the man’s fist. He wasn’t with it enough to ask who at the time, but finding out later that it had been Lockwood himself…? Not Castle, either.

Someone else. Someone unrelated…

”Or maybe someone _related_ ,” he muttered in the dark. He pulled up his contacts and dialed. The two hour time difference to Denver still made it the middle of the night.

“Whoever you are, you are dead for this. Mark my words.” Ezra Standish’s Southern drawl was sleepy and monumentally pissed off at the same time, and Kevin was almost pitifully glad to hear his cousin’s voice. When his Aunt Maude’s son had come to stay with them at the age of fifteen, then six-year-old Kevin had never thought they’d become a dynamic duo the way they did. He was so glad of it now...

“Did you know you’re not actually the first person to say something like that to me tonight?” he joked shakily.

The sleep and irritation fled and Ezra’s voice was only bright concern. “Kevin? What’s wrong?”

Funny, it was harder to say now that he had the other man on the line. “Sorry. I know I’m calling during the Forbidden Zone, but—”

“Please stop stalling, Young Mister Ryan,” Ezra told him gently.

 _Young Mister Ryan_. Kevin chuckled, coughing as he did so. “You’re never gonna let me live that down, are you?” he asked. “Sister Peter Marie…”

 

> _”Listen ass clown. I spent twelve years in Catholic school. Hell, they used to do this to me for talking in class—”_

“Kevin!” Ezra’s voice had gone from concerned to nearly fearful.

“Sorry,” he said quickly, calming his cousin. “Sorry, um… just thinking I would rather have spent my evening with her than…” He cleared his throat and stopped himself and the tears of residual fear that wanted to fall. “Do you remember telling me about that gig in Shreveport?” he asked, surprised to sound so light and conversational. “The one at the old packing plant?”

Ezra was silent for a very long time, and Kevin almost regretted bringing it up. Ezra had been made while undercover and the arms dealer had tied him with his face down toward the basin of a wash stall in an abandoned packing plant and turned the water on. It had been full before his team got to him.

“Oh, Kevin,” Ezra whispered finally.

“Washtub full of ice water, but… yeah.”

“What happened?”

Kevin closed his eyes and ignored the tears that snuck out from his lids. His cousin’s voice was solid and calming and completely neutral. He’d always envied Ezra that control and used it shamelessly now to lean on and just get this all _out_.

Kevin told him what happened. Told him how he and Javi had been taken down like amateurs—

“I hardly expect an amateur would have been able to catch up to a man like this Lockwood you’re describing.”

 

> _“I’ve been doing this job for a while now and no one’s ever got this close to me.”_

Kevin shook himself. “We were leaving,” he admitted. “Would have walked right out and left him to his business if he hadn’t made us and thrown that damn flashbang.”

“It’s providential when the bad guys are accommodating,” Ezra deadpanned.

Kevin grinned bitterly, shivering. “Yeah.” He cleared his throat again. It felt like the ice water was stuck in there. He’d never cough it out. “So… There was the usual stuff: him threatening and us refusing to give him anything. And all the time, he’s got this guy emptying bags of ice into this basin, and I’m thinking, ‘What’s the ice for?’ You know? Even though I already knew?”

Ezra’s silence said he knew all too well. The coffeepot dinged and Kevin untangled himself from the afghan and headed back to get a cup.

“Who did they start with?” Ezra asked.

“Oh that was the best part,” Kevin said, willing his hand not to shake as he poured the boiling liquid. Would _hot_ water have hurt as much going in? “They um, wrapped a noose around Javi’s neck. Jerked it tight so I wouldn’t struggle.”

 

> _Kevin watched in horror, straining against his bonds for his partner as he wouldn’t have for himself, as Lockwood ordered his man to loop the noose around Javi’s neck. Javi yelled bloody murder, the noose tightening until the sound stopped. Kevin locked his eyes with his partner as his face turned purple…_

“And _did_ you struggle?”

“Oh, hell yeah,” Kevin replied with a thoroughly unstable laugh. “We’re pretty much both assholes when it comes to that.” He retreated back to the couch, blocking the memory of how much it hurt to watch Javi suck in air so desperately once Kevin had been put in position and the noose was loosened. “There was a second there, when I was…. under water. And I heard Javi scream, ‘Okay!’ or something—so loud—and they pulled me up, I thought... “ He shivered. Again. “I told him not to say anything, but for a second there…”

“You prayed he would.”

 

> _“Listen, you’re too late,” Javi said._
> 
> _Please… Please..._
> 
> _“The cops already know about.”_ PLEASE _“Me and your mom.”_

As they had been then, Kevin’s tears now were half terror and half relief. His laugh was just as hysterical. “Hell of a cop, huh?”

“Yes, Kevin,” Ezra answered, the somber, serious tone catching Kevin’s ear. “You both were. Just because you hope—and trust me when I tell you, there’s always a part of you that hopes—doesn’t mean you give in.”

Kevin sniffled loudly, trying to stop the tears but sort of glad to be alive to feel them. They were warm. “Yeah. I might have, actually, if Beckett hadn’t shown up when she did.”

“Ah, the lovely Kate!” The charm and smile in Ezra’s voice were a little fake, but reality sucked right at the moment, so he’d take it. “So the team is intact then?”

Kevin shrugged, feeling better than he had been. “I still have both kneecaps,” he offered wryly.

The line was silent for a minute and Kevin cursed himself for saying anything. “Sorry, Ezra, I just—”

“Do you ever wonder what it is about the Standish family line that we choose such ludicrous professions?” Ezra asked out of the blue. “My father, our grandfather. You, me, Cousin Jimmy?”

“Mom always blames the Ryan side of the family.” Kevin settled back, the exhaustion hitting him again. “My dad’s uncles are cops.”

“Perhaps why you’re so diligent, then,” Ezra teased. “A double dose. While I have my mother’s side of the family to offset the righteousness.”

Kevin yawned. “That’s not what your friend Vin says,” he told his cousin, closing his eyes. “Well, about Maude, yes, but...” he yawned again. “He says you’re a hell of an agent.” He snorted. “Certainly a hell of a friend.”

“I think it’s time you go back to bed, Young Mister Ryan,” Ezra told him mock-sternly. “I do hope you get the day off today, after your valiant night?”

“Yeah,” Kevin murmured, half asleep. “Hey Ezra? Thanks. I didn’t really know who else would get it, you know?”

“Call later,” Ezra replied. “Whenever you need to.” He turned teasing. “Or whenever you’re ready to announce your betrothal to Miss Jenny O’Malley.”

“Good night, Ezra,” Kevin said pointedly.

Ezra’s reply was more gentle. “Good night.”

Kevin canceled the call and dropped the phone onto his chest, asleep in seconds.

He did not dream.

*******  
the end


End file.
